Jean Baudrillard was born in Reims in 1929 and now lives in Paris. From 1966 to 1987 he taught sociology at the University of Paris X (Nanterre). Mark Poster is Director of the Film Studies Program and Professor of History at University of California, Irvine

'Jean Baudrillard continues to be an illuminating thinker as we move into the new high-tech millennium that he has anticipated in his writings of the past decades. Mark Poster's collection contains key texts from the entire trajectory of Baudrillard's work. Featuring new translations and concluding with a recent interview, Selected Writings provides access to one of the most important writers of our time.'Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles

• Acknowledgements. Notes on the Translation.Introduction: Mark Poster.1. The System of Objects.2. Consumer Society.3. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign.4. The Mirror of Production.5. Symbolic Exchange and Death.6. On Seduction.7. Simulacra and Simulations.8. Fatal Strategies.9. The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media.10. Cool Memories.11. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.12. The Illusion of the End.13. The Perfect Crime.14. Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit.

Jean Baudrillard was born in Reims in 1929 and now lives in Paris. From 1966 to 1987 he taught sociology at the University of Paris X (Nanterre). Mark Poster is Director of the Film Studies Program and Professor of History at University of California, Irvine

'Jean Baudrillard continues to be an illuminating thinker as we move into the new high-tech millennium that he has anticipated in his writings of the past decades. Mark Poster's collection contains key texts from the entire trajectory of Baudrillard's work. Featuring new translations and concluding with a recent interview, Selected Writings provides access to one of the most important writers of our time.'Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles

• Acknowledgements. Notes on the Translation.Introduction: Mark Poster.1. The System of Objects.2. Consumer Society.3. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign.4. The Mirror of Production.5. Symbolic Exchange and Death.6. On Seduction.7. Simulacra and Simulations.8. Fatal Strategies.9. The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media.10. Cool Memories.11. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.12. The Illusion of the End.13. The Perfect Crime.14. Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit.